Honestly after I started playing them I just got totally sold.
The amount of variety is crazy. Various degrees of subverting or playing various tropes straight, as well as sidways.
A long time ago, when Pandaren were all babes
There was a land of the free
Fantasy and dreams
Were its untouched wealth
And goodness and love were real
Each Pandaren desires to reach Gandhara
His very own utopia In the striving, in the seeking soul Pandaren can see Gandhara
For those who don’t get what I’m referencing, it’s the credits song of the TV adaption of Journey To The West which was called Monkey Magic and it was about a Buddhist monk making a pilgrimage to India which [I think, might be wrong] happened but what didn’t happen was that he was accompanied by three other creatures.
One of them was the Monkey King.
As for why I’m mentioning it eh I kinda thought that last line fit the Pandaren Monks.
I can only recommend watching “Legends Sumarized” by the YT channel “Overly Sarcastic Productions”. It’s very well done and for anyone who likes the story a treasure.
And MoP has some of it. Like the four temples (of chinese/japanese mythology) with the four animals that protect the four directions. And a few other references.
Though monks got alot of that in legion. Brewmaster Fu Zan artifact got a hidden appearance that comes very very close to the one staff the monkey king (well, pillar of an underwater dragon but w/e) is using.
Also Zen flight… which is the 1:1 copy of the cloud the monkey king is traveling on.
And maybe… Just maybe…
THAT YOU LITERALLY MEET THE MONKEY KING HIMSELF. And he tells you where to find Fu Zan. Though you did in MoP too, I believe. Just not in the same manner.
The whole fantasy of the monk (and the player character) is very much centered around the journey to the west and has many references of it.
That’s a shame. I appreciated the dragon that turned into a horse.
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I agree, that’s why I shrug them off for numerous other reasons 
Pandaren in the Vol’jin novel = 
Pandaren in game = 
Like most of wow’s lore tbf.
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This’d be why I love RP. It’s so fun to play out what these races COULD be instead of the bland colourless versions we see ingame.
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I just think it’s an utter shame that blizzard seem incapable of building the world as they should in-game.
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If I recall the book correctly Sun Wuukong/Monkey King got his staff from an underwater kingdom ruled by a dragon. Think he tricked him for it so it sounds like a very strong reference to it.
I might as well give Monk another spin.
Even if Vol’jin didn’t get the killing blow, an arrow to the back would have been a nice nod to his previous threats.
Honestly though, I wish Caine had survived the Mak’gora with Garrosh. Hate that he went down to poison.
Could have had Caine spare him. Garrosh take it as a super insult, because lets be honest, in those circumstances it would be.
Garrosh’s story could then continue mostly the same, just not as Warchief and his “turning point of no return” could have been purposefully killing Caine out of revenge, hell, even Baine considering he wasn’t much of a character at the time.
Guess I don’t like how a lot of his story arc was him simply being manipulated.
Mion’s ‘guides’ are just a thinly veiled attempt to have a pop at various topics Mion is annoyed about.
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Let’s face it, almost every race has a novel or a zone, in which they’re shown off as being deep, powerful and interesting.
Then outside of that one novel or zone, they’re suddenly jobbers who exist for no reason but show how powerful this other race that is currently in the spotlight is, or how powerful this character that is currently in the spotlight is.
Is there any race that’s consistently depicted in a positive light and hasn’t jobbed during any point in the history of the Warcraft setting?
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Mogu?
All things considered, they have achieved a lot, and when they lose it is usually for a very understandable reason (ie being ganked by the unstoppable adventurers, who make even demigods seem like murlocs in comparison) or it just makes sense in the story and furthers the character of both sides (pandaren rebellion - exploiting an unforeseen weakness in the mogu form of warfare, but by no means indicating that the mogu are weak as a whole).
Mogu were the best villains in WoW history, change my mind.
Really off topic. Might not even be an unpopular opinion, but I never liked ProJared.
They were overwhelmed by the Pandaren, a slave species that fought them without any sort of weaponry and won. I’d call that jobbing in order to make another race look good. There’s also the fact that the fearsome Mogu are reduced to nothing more than Zul’s lackeys without any significant figures in BFA, who don’t accomplish anything of value whatsoever. They’re even treated as little more than pests by the Zandalari, only allowed to live because they were the treasured pets of Zul before his betrayal.
I agree that they were good villains, but they’ve had their points of hilarious incompetence, along with every other race.
I disagree. It is clearly explained why the mogu lost - not only was the concept of fighting monks completely new to them, their weapons were also oversized and unwieldy, designed to intimidate the slaves, but less useful against the evasive monks.
Furthermore, the other slave races - such as but not limited to Jinyu and Hozen - also joined the rebellion, and as the mogu had relied on slavery for their entire infrastructure, the rebellion soon collapsed all sense of order in the Mogu empire and made it harder to organise a counter-offensive.
And despite all this, the rebels did take heavy losses. It was by no means an easy revolution.
It does not at all strike me as something that made the mogu look pathetic. They were unprepared, yes, but when things have been the same for thousands of years they probably did not expect the slaves to suddenly rise up.
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Well, we murdered all of those significant figures. They did show up, and they did conquer Warport Rastari right under the nose of Zandalari capital, which is no mean feat, and that is before you count in the surrounding dock islands - which were also mostly mogu work. Obviously the players stomped them, the players stomp literally everything, but they did get quite far before that.
That is just Zul’s followers being jerks. It is not the mogu’s fault. ‘The Zandalari will honour their pact or die!’, it seems like the mogu were on Zandalar more to keep Zul’s allies in line than anything else.
Well, the monkey king didn’t really “trick” the dragon. The dragon had like massive amounts of weapons and Sun Wukong tried them all out (or a few?) and did not like any of them. Then he saw some random pillar standing in the palace of the underwater dragon and he just kinda ripped it off and it formed to a staff size. Monkey king was like “well, that’s cool bruh I will take it!” while the dragon was like “WAIT THAT’S NOT EVEN A WEAPON”.
The quest to unlock the hidden appearance of Fu Zan is called “Legend of the Monkey King”, so yeh. You probably already see where this is going.
If you get all the references then the monk order hall is great.
why do we have zandalari monks but no worgen or goblin monks again?
It’s been a long time since I read the book but that does sound more accurate as to what happened.
For Worgen I assume it has something to do with their beastial nature.
It’s arbitrary, honestly. There is no reason undead and mag’har can be monks but worgen can’t.
Monks are probably the most lore-abused class in the game.